1. The setting. I mean, largely abandoned space prison that's turned into a kind of a violent monastery with a pretty interesting bunch of weirdos? I dig it.

2. Bishop's "reactivation" scene.

3. It established the Xeno's ability to use other organisms as hosts and get different physical traits from them.

4. The soundtrack. Seriously, it's a great one. I almost wish it would get re-purposed for a different movie.

What sucked about Alien 3:

1. The setup made no sense. Where did the facehugger come from? Why did it crack Newt's capsule and not infect her, but it somehow got into Ripley's? Why did it leak acid at all as nothing injured it? It's this, along with the fact that Newt & Hicks die right off the bat, that taints the film for most viewers.

2. The CGI Alien. This really wasn't the film's fault, I guess. It had the bad luck of being made when CGI was becoming ubiquitous and didn't really know how to use it properly.

3. The director, by his own admission, thought he wanted to do an Alien movie but had no idea how hard it was going to be.

UristThe Alien made it on board the Sulaco. As far as the other two characters dying? It's an Alien horror movie, not a nice happy feel good movie.

The Alien actually wasn't CGI. It was a rod puppet and one of those cases of practical effects where everyone worked their asses off to do something really difficult and when it got put together at the end it just looked...off a bit.

infinite zestAlien 3 was the first Alien I saw. Actually, I saw them in pretty much the opposite order: 3, 4, 2 and then 1.

SteamPoweredKleenex@Urist: The alien in the medical bay was a practical effect. The one running through the halls was CGI. It looked awful.

"...not a happy feel-good movie." Even in horror movies, just offing someone without preamble is cheap and easy. It's bullshit writing.

"The alien made it on board the Sulaco." When did the queen have a chance to lay any eggs? Her ovipositor was left on the planet, and the second she got off the dropship, she was fighting Ripley and then getting thrown out an airlock. If they'd shown the eggs attached to the dropship somewhere, MAYBE I'd buy it.

infinite zestWell, Ripley was able to climb back up the ladder and Bishop's torso's just kinda sitting there while all this other shit's moving around.. that whole scene never made any sense to me.

Basically they decided to turn it a dumber version of The Thing. It took place on a space station, Ripley was critically injured right off the bat and shipped away, making Hicks the main characters. The aliens released spores that caused people to spontaneously turn into aliens whenever the script called for it.

Except for the "spores" bit, it resembled a lot of the stuff you would end up seeing in Alien Resurrection, including the hybrid.

There were 2 things that ruined Alien 3 for me:

-The cheap way of killing off Newt and Hicks right away, invalidating the entire third act of Aliens.

-The stupid dumb fucking scene where they decide to coat an entire level with super future napalm, then have a guy carry up a bunch of contact flares on a ladder using a bag he didn't even bother to close. It was practically farcical.

StanleyPainI like this movie, though I like the "uncut" version even better (which restores the original alien birth from an oxen instead of a dog and the subplot about Golic thinking the alien is a god)

That said, what people need to remember is that this screenplay, as filmed, was not even FINALIZED until basically the film was already being made. David Fincher had a near impossible task...to take a collection of sets, costumes, and actors who had all been contracted to make essentially a DIFFERENT film, and then film a totally different script and have it not suck.

As far as I'm concerned, dude should get a medal for this movie not being complete shit.

All that said, even with the flawed story, I still think it's a great, very well made film. Killing off Newt and Hicks because they didn't want to spend the money on them as characters or whatever was bullshit, but still..great movie, I think.

Maggot BrainI don't get why people are so butt hurt over the death of Hicks and Newt. I think the people at RLM said it best when one of them said "these movies are basically about how the alien ruins Ripley's life."

StanleyPainI personally didn't have a huge problem with it because I felt the overly optimistic ending of Aliens was a bit of a cop-out on Cameron's part, but regardless it offended a lot of people. I guess the upcoming Alien film (the Blomkamp one) is going to somehow retcon this so that Hicks is alive and I think that's kinda dumb. I mean, just look at the convoluted nonsense plot of Aliens Colonial Marines to see how that works out.

Maggot BrainGod, I was talking to my roommate about Aliens Colonial Marines. He said they didn't even give a real explanation as to why Hicks is alive, they just more or less write it off as "it's a long story."

NominalThere's a video here giving the exact reason. Company mercs boarded the Sulaco and dragged Hicks out of the sleep chamber. Hicks flipped one of guys into the pod, which shut then ejected. He escape while everyone assumed the dead body in his crashed pod was him.

I didn't say it was a GOOD reason.

Maggot BrainWow, maybe they should have just said "it's a long story."

Going back to to Alien 3 I've often wondered how much of the finalized scrip was completed. The main story with Ripley and her new found boy friend is really solid but right after he gets killed the movie doesn't even really fall apart, it just gets kind of boring.

Quad9DamageIt's an either/or thing. The whole point of Newt and Newt surviving "Aliens" was to give a Ripley a shot at the motherhood she wanted but missed out on because her real daughter died of old age while Ripley was floating in space. On the other hand, it could be easily argued that the alien has robbed Ripley of everything she's wanted or could have had, hence Newt's necessary death.

I've also heard they killed off Newt because Carrie Henn aged too much to have been in suspended animation. That sounds like bullshit to me though because really, who would care about them changing a child actress between sequels?

John Holmes MotherfuckerAliens is a far superior film, and I'm still butthurt at David Fincher for shitting on it for no good reason. Why did Newt have to die? I can't see any reason for it other than she wouldn't have fit into Fincher's dark gritty shaved head exhaust fan vision. She would have mellowed his harsh.

>>I don't get why people are so butt hurt over the death of Hicks and Newt. I think the people at RLM said it best when one of them said "these movies are basically about how the alien ruins Ripley's life."

They weren't about that until Fincher derailed the franchise for the sake of his dark atmospheric vision, and his apparent film school infatuation with Blade Runner.

StanleyPainUh...Fincher had, like, ZERO input into any of the major creative decisions of this movie. Why do you think Fincher disowns this as part of his filmography? He directed the movie as best he could, but he had no control of any "vision" and the idea to kill Newt and Hicks was not his at all, but rather the mixed nonsense of dozens of screenwriters' competing visions for what the movie should be.

It may be that all the stuff i read in 1991 about The Dark Vision of David Fincher may have been studio hype. I had a feeling I was getting carried away, but I really enjoyed that rant. Aliens is one of my favorite movies of the 80s. Alien3 by itself isn't terrible, but the killing of Newt sort of makes Aliens seem pointless, so I've been mad about that for 20 years.